ITALY: In the Borghese Gardens

For almost a year Mussolini’s physicians have forbidden him his favorite exercise: a daily half-hour ride’ on a horse as mettlesome as his pet lioness, Italia Bella.

Last week he apparently considered himself sufficiently recovered from a series of intestinal disorders to ride horseback once more. First, his motor car roared at top speed up the Corso Umberto Primo, dashed out the Porta del Popolo, and climbed the lovely heights of the Borghese Gardens, now perhaps the most beautiful public park in Rome. There, immaculate in formal riding costume, he stepped out. His horse was led up. A crowd of Fascists cheered as he climbed into the saddle.

For half an hour he cantered, galloped, walked. Later, in his motor again, he dashed through the streets of Rome, as Wilhelm der Zweite once sped down Unter den Linden—giving way only to the Municipal Fire Department.

Historians and lovers of the arts found their thoughts a little stirred, as always, by the name of those art patrons par excellence, the Borghese. Il Benito, as he rode through their onetime gardens* was well within sight of the Villa Borghase—next to the Vatican the chiefest art treasure-house in Rome. He may have reflected that Napoleon, to whom he is so often compared, placed his sister, the beautiful Pauline Bonaparte, in that Villa. She is there still— reclining in marble on a marble couch, as Venus, whom she much resembled. Her husband, Camillo Filippo Ludovico, Prince Borghese, was paid another great compliment by Napoleon. The Corsican, with characteristic economy, left his beautiful sister at Rome, but caused the most valuable pieces in the Borghese’ collection to be conveyed to Paris. They have never been returned. Strolling about the Louvre, one notes that its most precious exhibits are very apt to bear a discreetly printed card on which the word “Stolen”† is omitted: “From the Borghese Collection.”

Not all the original stealing was done by Napoleon, however. The Borghese from Pope Paul V (Camillo Borghese, 1550) down, stole not a few trifles themselves. They also purchased with the generosity of gods. Their depleted collection still ranks among the finest in the world.

*Since 1902 the property of the State, which purchased them from the family after a tenure of over 300 years.

†Officially they were “bought”—for a song.